The Descent is a solo journey, yet it cannot be done alone. It is a significant commitment and isn’t easy. It requires the ability to push life back and to create space for a sort of contained self-absorption of self-examination and inner work. It demands looking within at one’s self honestly and sharing with vulnerability in a circle of witnesses what you find there. It asks one to dissolve what is known to discover what is true when masks have been identified and stripped away. Descent invites a peeling back of conditioning that no longer serves, a transmutation and integration of the wounds carried from this life and beyond. It isn’t comfortable. And done with compassionate mentoring and guidance in an incredible circle of trust, there is a peculiar joy to the work. Laughter accompanies the tears. Priorities shift to choose an encounter with death that transforms and liberates at the level of the soul. Even wading through the river of grief shall pass. There is a shore on the other side, where others await you, see you, and celebrate you.  A place where you are welcomed into adulthood and can live your sovereign life, with an embodied sense of interconnectedness within the web of life that sustains you. 

Templates as old as humanity provide maps for the Tree of Life journey. Mentors, elders, and anchors in your community will hold the container for you. Your own individual connection to Spirit will be strengthened and will support your process of truly reclaiming your healthy maiden and claiming your birthrite into initiated adulthood.

Through direct mentoring, ceremony, deep self-inquiry, being held by elders and by community, we make this passage. Having those who have gone through this process before, who are aware of the aspects needed to come through this passage, while creating the support structure of elders, aunties, and community, is truly an invaluable gift in our modern context.

We acknowledge that in our current society, beyond the academic and work worlds, our youth are left on their own when it comes to maturing and developing into whole beings. In the places and times of an intact culture, it would be our elders who would be very invested in the journey of the youth, for if they are not consciously led, held, and pulled into adulthood, they may never reach there.  Some would say that a young person, while in the exploratory and adventuresome phase of adolescence, eventually longs to be in touch with their gifts; gifts that they were born here to offer into the world; that they may be made truly useful.

After reclaiming her/their healthy maiden through the Foundations journey, she/they feels pulled into her/their gifts.  Here, she/they must cross a "river of grief" in order to get there, she/they must descend. Claiming her/their gifts and being able to offer them to the world is a large part of what coming into adulthood is about.  The crossing of this "river of grief" is, in essence, a spiritual death; a necessary release of the smaller version of her/their self; a multi-stage ego death, that allows the larger adult-self to emerge. This is not a simple or easy process, for even spiritual death feels all the world like real death.

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The Offering

  • Ceremony

    Monthly councils, once/season 4 day intensive retreat and one weekend per month supporting fire ceremony

    Ceremonial work that promotes cleansing,  grief release, & aligning to your true self

    Post-Ceremony integration

    Culminating 10-12 day Adulthood Rites of Passage Ceremony

  • Nature and Culture Connection

    A spiritually sound container

    Being led on a deep nature connection journey

    Support in daily routines that promote prayerfulness and peace

    Moon Time practices & teachings

    Using the Kabbalistic Tree of Life as an archetypal map

  • Witness, Guidance, Mentoring

    Experience of a gift culture

    Access to elder support

    One-on-one mentoring

    Creation of a supportive community & long-term relationships

    Being in a long term process with a bonded group of peers

  • Claiming Adulthood

    A path and process to claim oneself as an adult

    Resources and somatic practices to support the dismantling of internal systems of Patriarchy

    Cultural Connection

    Ancestral inquiry & Honoring

    Council experience, guided self inquiry, & personal processing

What We Ask in Return

Prerequisite: Completion of the Foundations Journey

A Commitment to Adulthood Initiation Journey and Full Participation

Agreement to a Code of Conduct based on The Peacemaker Principles

Reciprocity of a monetary value and gifting throughout the journey to Tree of Life Elders & Supporters

Showing up for the Creation Rites (the two-week adulthood initiation ceremony) in your round and supporting the round that comes after you.

All the “not readies,” all the “I need time,” are understandable, but only for a short while. The truth is that there is never a “completely ready,” there is never a really “right time.” As with any descent to the unconscious, there comes a time when one simply hopes for the best, pinches one’s nose, and jumps into the abyss.

—Clarissa Pinkola Estes

  • “For years, I felt lost and confused, feeling all the external pressure to know who I am and what my path is, how to make a living, and be a producing member of society with some expectation that it would all be clear and immediate as soon as school was done. As I felt those pressures increase I wanted so badly to be able to meet them but only withdrew further and further inward into cloudiness and depression, feeling more disconnected from who I thought I was than ever. I needed mentorship and a safe container to move through the generations of stories that were making life so dark and murky for me, and I couldn’t do it by myself. I found a community of women who I truly look up to as role models of service, adulthood, and womanhood, who not only show me how to live in a good way through their actions, but could teach me how, and guide me through the process of clearing my ancestral lines and personal traumas, building self-generative practices, and unearthing and claiming my gifts to be able to step into selfhood and service. It continues to amaze me that through this process, I’ve released self-destructive patterns that I’ve carried my whole life, and now truly feel free from. I am healing my relationship to my family, to my body, and to the emotions that have made it hard for me to show up to life. Today I feel stronger in my sense of self, freer from the shackles and shadows that have kept me in hiding and self-loathing, and energized and inspired to activate in my service and give back to the world that continues to give me so much.”

    —Tree Of Life Initiate

  • “During this formative time, I met monthly in a circle of women for council and ceremony, received mentoring from older women who I perceive to be incredible change-makers in the world, and learned beautiful and powerful new prayer modalities. Through this work, I have come into myself as a spiritual leader and understand that I walk in the world in an essentially prayerful way; my connection to Spirit is central to who I am. It has been deeply enriching to delve into a ceremonial prayer form that draws strongly from the Kabbalistic Tree of Life while also incorporating more universal and ancient women's ways, modern eco/psycho-spiritual teachings on life cycles and rites-of-passage, and relevant and useful teachings from global spiritual traditions, while also honoring and including what is sacred to indigenous peoples that lived on this land long before we got here.”

    —Rebecca Schisler, Tree of Life Initiate, Visual Artist, Writer, and Educator

  • “I left the country and the culture I knew to pursue an alternative and healthier lifestyle in the United States. Although I found a home in the work of environmental education and social justice, the effects of depression and residual childhood trauma still hindered my progress and self confidence and prevented my career success. Through my experience in Tree of Life, I was able to process and move through what was holding me stuck in unhealthy patterning in relationships with people, food, myself and almost immediately after completing my Creation Rites ceremony, I began a path as a Horticultural Therapist working with teens and women in Eating Disorder Recovery. Every day is still a choice and a journey, but I now have the tools and a greater understanding to walk into each moment with a clear knowing of myself and curiosity for mending.”

    —Tree of Life Initiate

  • “For years I felt lost and confused, feeling all the external pressure to know who I am and what my path is, how to make a living, and be a producing member of society with some expectation that it would all be clear and immediate as soon as school was done.

  • “As I felt those pressures increase I wanted so badly to be able to meet them but only withdrew further and further inward into cloudiness and depression, feeling more disconnected from who I thought I was than ever.

  • “I needed mentorship and a safe container to move through the generations of stories that were making life so dark and murky for me, and I couldn’t do it by myself.

  • “I found a community of women who I truly look up to as role models of service, adulthood, and womanhood, who not only show me how to live in a good way through their actions, but could teach me how, and guide me through the process of clearing my ancestral lines and personal traumas, building self-generative practices, and unearthing and claiming my gifts to be able to step into selfhood and service.

  • “It continues to amaze me that through this process I’ve released self-destructive patterns that I’ve carried my whole life, and now truly feel free from. I am healing my relationship to my family, to my body, and to the emotions that have made it hard for me to show up to life.

  • “Today I feel stronger in my sense of self, freer from the shackles and shadows that have kept me in hiding and self-loathing, and energized and inspired to activate in my service and give back to the world that continues to give me so much.

    ToL Initiation Participant